back in Berlin, with politics buzzing about me like bees, the
peace of that Kentish countryside an almost unimaginable

thing.

We grew apart later, my wife and I, which was a nuisance,
because you both feel like unwashed dinner plates. She re-
mained as she always had been. I changed, intellectually and
almost physically, with my changing surroundings, far and
frequent journeys, nerve-absorbing occupation. I became a
nomad. I lost England, which I understood less and less, and
developed an interest, that became almost a passion, for the
study of foreign peoples and foreign places.

The worst of that was that it ultimately meant losing the
companionship of Brenda Mary, a lovely, cheerful child,
with whom I delighted to go tobogganing in the Grunewald
outside Berlin or skating at the Eisverein in Vienna or shopping
in Lugano. She was bilingual from the time she learned to
speak at all, and talked good Berlinisch to our Dienstmadel in
Berlin and sang 'Mei* Mutterl war a Weanerin* in good
Wienerisch to the charwoman in Vienna, and she had no inhibi-
tions but developed a quick intelligence through seeing so many
places and people and chatted with lively self-confidence to
everyone she met, from my good friend the old Minister on the
Ice Rink to the woman who used to go walking with a hen in the
Cottagegasse.

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